Biana Zorich

For the past five years, local gourmet food chain Petite Thuet’s One King West outpost has been nourishing downtowners with fresh loaves, vac-packed charcuterie and ready-made meals. But on April 30th, the area fixture will shut its doors. The lease on the space has expired, and co-owner Biana Zorich, who runs the company with her husband Marc Thuet, says the space was becoming too pricey. “Rent in the downtown core is getting a bit ridiculous,” she said. Apparently it’s gone up 30 per cent since they opened.

Petite Thuet’s Rosedale and St. Lawrence Market locations will remain open, and Biana says they plan to devote more energy to the company’s thriving wholesale business. She also hints, however, that they are in the “very, very early planning stages” for another Petite Thuet location. Stay tuned for more details.

This past Sunday marked the 22nd edition of Toronto Taste, which saw 2,000 food enthusiasts gathering at the ROM to meet some of Toronto’s top chefs while munching on their creations. Over 60 restaurants and 30 beverage purveyors were present at the annual fundraiser, which raises money for Second Harvest, a food rescue program that delivers to various social service agencies. This year, guests were greeted with everything from house-cured meats and fish to lobster and steak (not necessarily together). We caught up with Buca’s Rob Gentile, Nota Bene’s David Lee, Petite Thuet’s Marc Thuet and Biana Zorich, Splendido’s Victor Barry, Top Chef Canada judge Mark McEwan and many more for the latest on their various ventures.

With only four chefs remaining in the competition, last night’s episode of Top Chef Canada started in style—with Carl Heinrich, David Chrystian, Trevor Bird and Jonathan Korecki suiting up at their condo, accompanied by appropriately gladiatorial music. Over the next 43-odd TV minutes they’d be confronted with a legendarily tough (and foul-mouthed) guest judge, and one of those perplexing elimination challenges that leaves a chef between a rock and a hard place. Find out who makes it to the final and who gets sent packing, below.

Remember last year when Chris Cosentino, one of the pioneers of the offal revival, visited Toronto for undisclosed reasons and claimed he could smell Chinatown from three blocks away? Or when Richard Blais, the molecularly inclined winner of Top Chef All-Stars,tweeted about the interesting tasting menu he’d just lunched on in Toronto? Or when Italian food legend Lidia Bastianichdropped in at All the Best Fine Foods? Turns out they weren’t here just because they love us—they’re all guest judges on season two of Top Chef Canada. Other notable judges and tasters include—and let us be clear, this is a bit of a spoiler for those who really like to keep their Top Chef Canada viewing pure—east-coast chef Michael Smith, season one host Thea Andrews (no hard feelings, we guess!), chef-about-town Matty Matheson of Parts and Labour, Leafs assistant captain Colby Armstrong,Susur Lee and his soon-to-be restaurateur sons Kai and Jet Bent-Lee, Toca’s Tom Brodi, Roger Mooking, Top Chef Masters winner Marcus Samuelson, last season’s winner Dale MacKay and his adorable son Ayden, Keisha Chante, Rick the Temp Campanelli, Lorenzo Loseto of George, Charlie’s Burgers mastermind Franco Stalteri, husband-and-wife dynamos Marc Thuet and Biana Zorich, Odd Bits author Jennifer McLagan, Vancouver Indian restaurateur and chef Vikram Vijand assorted competitors from last season, not to mention the somewhat bizarro guests we already told you about, like Alan Thicke and Mike Holmes. (Whew!) Not bad.

Chef Robbie Hojilla, the man of the hour, pictured with his family. (Image: Renée Suen)

Over the last couple of months, we’ve reported on events where cooks and restaurateurs have donated their time and resources to give to others. Last Monday at Frank’s Kitchen, we dropped in on a fundraiser thrown for one of their own: Woodlot cook Robbie Hojilla. Just 25 years old, Hojilla has been diagnosed with heart failure and is currently not able to work. Given that the restaurant business lacks the sort of financial fallbacks of other jobs (like health benefits or sick leave), chef Frank Parhizgar and his wife, Shawn Cooper, the owners of Frank’s Kitchen, decided to help the talented young chef with an industry-wide fundraiser. Donating space, food and alcohol, the couple joined up with the staff of Frank’s and Woodlot to offer a multi-course dinner complete with wine pairings.

Two thousand of Toronto’s food lovers and makers gathered at the ROM on Sunday for the 21st edition of Toronto Taste. The annual fundraiser—which raises money for Second Harvest—saw more than 60 restaurants and 30 beverage purveyors offering their best to the guests. Burgers and tacos might have been the plats du jour, but new restaurant openings seemed to be the hottest item on the plates of many chefs and restaurateurs we spoke to. Here’s what we heard from Buca’s Rob Gentile, Woodlot’s David Haman, Scarpetta’s Scott Conant, Splendido’s Victor Barry, Top Chef Canada contestants Dustin Gallagher and Andrea Nicholson and many more. Words and images by Renée Suen

Zorich and Thuet at the opening of Conviction in 2009 (Image: Karon Liu)

It was fun while it lasted, but despite plans to eventually bring Conviction Kitchen to the U.S., next week’s season finale of the reality show will mark the end of the series, Eye Weekly reports. Chef Marc Thuet and partner Biana Zorich have put the kibosh on a third season of the reality show, since working away from Toronto is apparently making it too difficult for the couple to focus on their business here.

Biana Zorich and Marc Thuet at their home in Toronto (Image: Davida Aronovitch)

Marc Thuet and Biana Zorich are exhausted. It’s taken the pair a month to recuperate after shooting the second season of their reality show, Conviction Kitchen II, in Vancouver. Like last year’s Toronto edition, the program is airing on CityTV and features former convicts learning the cooking and restaurant trade. Amid talk of a third season set in the U.S., Zorich and Thuet are in Toronto re-organizing their lives. They’ve shut down the original Conviction restaurant on King Street West and are focusing on their bread-making business. Here, they talk with us about their Vancouver experience, their marriage and the Conviction Kitchen contestants they came to love.

In our new series, Crisper Chronicles, we ask the city’s top food personalities to let us into their most intimate alimentary enclave: the home refrigerator. This week, chef Marc Thuet and his wife, front-of-house master Biana Zorich—both back in Toronto after shooting a new season of Conviction Kitchen in Vancouver—talk about the treasures (and trash) that lurk in their icebox.

Biana Zorich and Marc Thuet at the opening of Conviction in 2009 (Image: Karon Liu)

Just over a year after opening Conviction—the third incarnation of their flagship restaurant—chef Marc Thuet and partner Biana Zorich have closed the restaurant for good. A lapsed lease has spelled the end of team Thuet’s presence on King Street West—and the end of an era, seeing as the couple was among the first to colonize what is now a hot restaurant strip. Now they’re turning their attention to places as close as Rosedale and as far away as Alsace. Anywhere, they say, but King West.

More details of Marc Thuet’s cookbook are out as he and Biana Zorich prepare to head out west to work on the second season of Conviction Kitchen next month. The Post reports that the surprisingly expletive-free title is French Food My Way and that the book will be released in November. This may be cutting it close in terms of promotion, since the chef is scheduled to shoot a third season of his reality show in the States starting in September. The book includes 100 recipes covering breakfast, lunch and dinner, plus desserts and special meals for get-togethers.

Marc Thuet and Biana Zorich: courage of their Convictions (Photo by Karon Liu)

Marc Thuet and Biana Zorich are leaving Toronto to take on Vancouver and the United States. Following the success of their two major projects of 2009, Convictionand Conviction Kitchen—restaurant and reality show, respectively—the couple is heading to the west coast next week to scout real estate for the second location of the restaurant. Like the King West version, the Vancouver outpost will be run by reformed criminals whose trials and tribulations will be broadcast on TV.

The last thing prime time television needs is another screaming chef, so we are relieved to report that Marc Thuet was right when he described his new TV program as more of a documentary than a reality show. Conviction Kitchen, in which Thuet and his partner, Biana Zorich, mentor a group of ex-cons to run their new restaurant, focuses on the food and the business aspect of running the establishment rather than the personal dramas of the contestants (shocking, indeed). Only three episodes have aired so far; for the most part, the six servers and seven cooks seem pretty competent and likable; they’d probably blow the contestants of Hell’s Kitchenout of the salted, boiling water.

This year’s Toronto Taste corralled 40 of the city’s chefs—including Mark McEwan, David Lee, Jamie Merieles, Marc Thuet, Keith Froggett and other big names—into a fenced-in space on Cumberland Avenue. The objective was to raise money for Second Harvest. We toured the food stations and met the chefs before the crowd arrived.

Desserts were especially ingenious. The YMCA’s culinary skills training program flaunted their molecular gastronomy techniques with samples of white chocolate spaghetti with raspberry sauce and chocolate martini caviar (it tastes like regular pasta but then it slowly and strangely melts into sweet strands of chocolate) and pulled-pork ice cream (tastes more like vanilla) with a beer chaser (served in a test tube, of course).

Often, we found chefs taking breaks in between service and cooking duties. Marc Thuet and Biana Zorich (seen here) react as though they won the lottery when their sous chef arrives with plates of McEwan’s tuna. Later that night, Scaramouche’s Froggett downed Thuet’s char as helpers dismantled the flower arrangements and handed them out to the ladies in the crowd.

Jamie Merieles from Oliver and Bonacini scored points for originality: smoked salmon wrapped around a breadstick and served with an asparagus chaser. He said the veggie conquers the fish aftertaste, though he had a big basket of mints on hand just in case.

Continuing the seafood theme, Chef at Home star Michael Smith offered whimsical square bowls of sustainable shrimp gazpacho—potato strips fried into anchor shapes served as a decoration. “We were up all of last night peeling potatoes,” he explained, adding that he made a thousand of them.

In-season Arctic char was the ingredient of the night. Marc Thuet had a glazed version, while Scaramouche served it raw with a citrus dressing and a fennel salad. Donna Dooher of Mildred’s Temple Kitchen served hers sashimi style (seen here), accompanied by a potato salad for a picnic feel.

This year’s Toronto Taste corralled 40 of the city’s chefs—including Mark McEwan, David Lee, Jamie Merieles, Marc Thuet, Keith Froggett and other big names—into a fenced-in space on Cumberland Avenue. The objective was to raise money for Second Harvest. We toured the food stations and met the chefs before the crowd arrived.